Friday, September 7, 2012

The Trials of Earrings



When I consider the items I have up for sale in my etsy shop, I realize that although necklaces take forever to make and use more materials I have approximately 5x more necklaces than earrings. I have a good reason for this.

I hate making earrings. 

Earrings can be as simple as leetle drops on a hook, but something within me rebels against this. “It’s too easy,” I think. “Anyone could do this,” I think. And yet, sometimes, I fold and make these kind. I feel cheap. But I do it. 

If I don’t make these simple drops, then things get even more complicated. Then the earrings require a design. This is hard enough. But when I think one up by trying dozens of trials on one earring and finally finish it to my satisfaction, I’m not finished. I have to make another one.

The problem with earrings is that you have to make two of them. That’s kinda the point. Furthermore, earrings are intrinsically meant to be two little matchy-matchy pieces. I have found that once I make one of them, I’m done with that design and want to do something new with the second one, which invariably makes finishing the pair a tedious process—or else an unfinished one—since I generally can’t find the parts that I want to finish the second earring to make it complement the first but not be a carbon copy. I have a very short attention span.

Why are earrings so hard?